Preventing ticket-switching of RFID-tagged items in apparel retail stores

•We consider ticket-switching in apparel retail stores.•We develop authentication protocol to prevent ticket-switching.•We evaluate security properties of the proposed protocols.

When a retail store places an item for sale at a set price, the expectation is that the customer pays this price for the item. However, the ‘customer’ may not necessarily pay this amount due to any number of legitimate (e.g., price promotion) as well as illegitimate (e.g., theft) reasons. We consider ticket-switching, a scenario whereby the customer pays a lower amount for the purchased item by switching its price identifier. We propose the use of item-level RFID tags to address ticket-switching in apparel retail stores. We then develop authentication protocols that are directed at reducing the occurrence of ticket-switching incidents as well as identifying them when they occur. We evaluate the security properties of the proposed protocols.